Friday, January 18, 2013

Parata's job safe in shufflePrime Minister John Key says Education Minister Hekia Parata will be safe in an upcoming Cabinet reshuffle, despite her troubles last year, because she is hugely talented and one of National's best communicators.

If Hekia Parata is National's best communicator after the larger classroom fiasco, the Christchurch school closure debacle and the Novopay catastrophe, then the rest of the Party are head injury patients who can barely string syllables together.

Hekia Parata is the Anti-Midas, everything she touches turns to shit. Someone with the unique talent of causing everything around her to combust should be sent to Afghanistan, but the reality is National are trying to ram through massive free market reforms in Education and don't care who the Minister is. Stepping Parata down would be an admission of defeat and National won't want that.

...Hekia keeps her job, not because she is in any way vaguely competent but because National are planning to attack public education and a change of Minister just before they launch their Charter School madness could lead to calls for a change of policy as well.

Listening to Key describe Parata as National's best communicator after her appalling communication meltdown in education suggests a credibility gap that parents can't help but notice. While those opposed to dismantling our education system will take some light relief in the farce of Key's comment, it shows that National's desire to degrade our public education service is far larger than the embarrassment of having to describe Parata as 'hugely talented'.

Did I mention her wanting to put intellectually handicapped girls into a school where their chance of being sexually abused was overturned by the Court?

The fact that Key would hold onto this failure of a Minister because of the changes they want to inflict upon public education should keep us all awake at night.